Dappered

Affordable Men's Style

Style Battle: The Postal Service vs. UPS

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Mailman Style vs. UPS What-Can-Brown-Do-For-You Style

Above Photo credits:  USPS Logo | UPS Shield

Forget your preferred method of shipping for a second.  This is about how they look when walking up to your door, box in hand.  Everybody likes to see their order arrive, but somebody has to make that happen.  And it’s the delivery person who makes the final hand off to the customer.  So which side wins in the category of visual presentation?

The case for The Postal Service:. This is no competition.  Just look at the color scheme. Your United States Postal Service is outfitted in chambray blue, navy, and white.  You could wear an entire suit/shirt/tie combination out of those three.  The accessories options are endless (bags, hats… pith helmets.)  Plus our first Postmaster General was Ben Franklin.  That guy was quite the dresser.  The proof?  All the ladies loved him.

The case for UPS:. Hang on there mailman.  If you want to make this about impressing the ladies, then just compare our vehicles.  Chicks dig the truck.  You’re stuck puttering around in a rig that looks more appropriate for delivering ice cream than parcels.  UPS doesn’t mess around with water bills or junk mail, so our uniforms (as brown as they are) cover physiques that have been sculpted by hauling boxes all day.  When those aforementioned ladies see us roll up in the truck and jump out in those trim shorts which they love?  Just one glance at these parcel lifting glutes and they can’t wait to get their hands on this package.

Your turn.  Which delivery team has the better overall style?  Make your case in the comments below…

Comments

  1. USPS and it’s not even close. Monochromatic brown looks bad. And I’m fairly certain most of my boxers are bigger than their hot pants… err, shorts.

  2. USPS for uniforms alone; however, UPS seems to have more of an appreciation for the intangibles like shaving and being generally presentable. The uniform is only half the story here.

    Grammar police: “Hang on there, mailman.”

  3. LOL, slow day huh Joe? But i will chime in, USPS, cuz blue is just an awesome color

  5. Whoa, that’s brutal (their vs. there).  I’d like to think I don’t make that brain fart that often.  Slightly embarrassing.  Fixed.

  7. More subtle grammar police point – you still forgot the comma before “mailman.”  Since you’re addressing the mailman, it should be set off by a comma. Just like it’s “Happy birthday, Joe!”

    Of course, I’d rather screw up punctuation than a homophone and nobody’s perfect.

  8. Yeah, I’m going to say USPS hands down – this is about style more than whatever happens to be the physique of the person hired.  I’ve also always found the UPS trucks to be rather unpleasantly brown and boxy.  I’ll take a nice, bright USPS-mobile and a colorful outfit any day.

  10. Obsessive adherence to rules is boring and cumbersome anyway. I vote for linguistic liberty… provided it doesn’t involve randomly capitalizing letters in the middle of words.

  11. I can appreciate that attention to detail for sure, but the problem for me is, well there’s a few.

    I wasn’t taught a lick of grammar in grammar school.  Still don’t know why.  My first real exposure to grammar (and I’m sure this is obvious) was when I started taking a foreign language.  “Conju-what the verb?  I know what the verb is…”

    Also, I think I’ve been poisoned by years of work in a business where there was plenty of writing, but it wasn’t for print.  It was broadcast so you wrote how you were going to deliver the sentence verbally.  So the comma, while I’m sure it’s the right rule, wasn’t how the hypothetical UPS driver would have delivered his point.  At least in my head.  It wouldn’t have been: Hang on there, (pause) Mailman.  It would have been a more direct and rhythmic “Hang-on-there-Mailman”

    That said, I’m out of excuses for the their/there neuron fail.  Hell, I didn’t even have a drink last night.
    I mean… HELL!  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhHpJ45_zwM&feature=related)

  13. Oh man – School House Rock!  I forgot about those.  That’s awesome!

    I actually hated grammar until halfway through learning Spanish in high school, then something clicked.  That being said, our punctuation and spelling rules are awful.  Frankly, I’ve always found that comma rule weird.  Public education for the win!  And I still mess up homophones all the time, even though it makes me cringe when I do.  But I’m all about starting sentences with conjunctions.  Also a big fan of fragments, when appropriate.

  14. Book for you to check out: http://theforgottenfoundingfather.com/  I’m almost through with it and it’s pretty fascinating.  Noah Webster (of Webster’s Dictionary) had a huge hand in the formative years of the United States.  He was also an odd duck.  A good many people, for very good reasons, didn’t like him.  Great read.

  15. If fit matters most, I gotta go with UPS. My mailman and some others I’ve seen are tent city. Also just look sloppy in general. 

  16. This looks great – I love those little-known histories.  I’ll definitely have to add that to my reading list.  I’m just about done with Freakonomics (I know, I’m about 5 years late on that one – really quick read, though).

  17. I’m also getting a kick out of where this comment thread has traveled since embarking on a more or less simple question about two mail services.

  19. Thanks Joe, for an always entertaining site. This is hilarious. USPS may have the uniform, but we all know if the fit is poor, you look like crap. And when you look like crap and have poor fitting clothes….?!?!
    Chicks drool over UPS guys. And firemen.

  20. I’ve always had a fondness for the English language, but taking a linguistics class in college really solidified it for me. Phonology, syntax, morphology.. it’s fascinating just how many different directions the world has taken communication. From purely guttural and animal, to the infinite sea of human interactions, the ability to pass your ideas to another being and have them comprehend it is nothing short of amazing. Studying linguistics made me appreciate not only the efficient order of the romance languages and the subtle complexities of Eastern languages, but the beautiful imperfection of the English language, and how the Germanic etymology and present-day slang all assimilate themselves into our melting-pot lexicon. It’s effin’ kewl. :)

  24. Unlike Joe, commenters don’t get too go back and change their homophone errors. 

  26. I have to vote for USPS, because at least they come when they’re supposed to. Ever had something shipped UPS and gotten “sorry, you weren’t there” when you damn well were there? Can’t give the style edge to an invisible man.